Finding a Reason
by SnubNosedSilhouette
Summary: In the immediate aftermath of "Journey's End" more than a few questions need answers.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: **Dr. Who and associated characters don't belong to me, I'm just taking them out for a spin.

**A/N: **Yes, it's been done many, many times before, but plot bunnies can't be helped.

He wouldn't say the words. She knew he wouldn't. Couldn't. Not only for the usual reason-she'd always known that road was one he-they-could not travel. But also because of him. The Other. If he-her Doctor-said the words everyone on that beach knew were on the tip of his tongue-where would that leave the Other? Because if he-hers-said them, no power in existence could keep her away from him. She would get in his blue box and chain herself to something inside before he'd leave her behind again. If he just said the words.

"I said Rose Tyler..." and he stopped. Even as she listened, mentally willing him to keep going, she knew in her heart that he never would. Then she had turned to the Other and asked him the same question. "How was that sentence going to end?" He took her arm, and leaned down. A whisper. As human as he and her Doctor claimed him to be, in front of Donna, her mother, his original self, he couldn't speak the words in any kind of public sense.

"I love you."

She let out a breath she hadn't even realized she was holding. For that one second the familiar, long-loved, long-missed and sought-for voice was simply His. They were one—her Doctor and the Other. Without thinking, she did the thing she had imagined doing innumerable times. She grabbed the lapels of his ridiculously blue (of course it was blue) suit and pressed her lips to his. It was as natural as breathing, as automatic as remembering how to ride a bicycle, as reflexive as kicking her leg out when her knee was struck by a small rubber hammer. It was every bad cliche she knew, and it was wonderful.

She didn't hear the crunch of trainers on the wet sand. Didn't hear a beloved set of doors pulled shut. And yet, she wasn't surprised when she heard the familiar moaning grind of the TARDIS taking flight over the sound of her racing heart. The only shock was in realizing after a blissful handful of ignorant seconds that the unified Him she was kissing was actually only the Other.

She turned-turned away from the Other-to catch a last glimpse of her Doctor. She didn't get it. The TARDIS was already mostly gone-a half-forgotten visual memory. She could see him in her mind, turning away from the door, from her, and directing his attention to his next destination. Wherever that was. Tears stung her eyes, and she felt the Other's hand slip into hers. She knew he was trying to reassure her that the Doctor was still with her, and she dimly recognized that his pain at that moment must be as acute as her own, if for different reasons. She didn't care. In that moment, the hand she held was the only thing of the Doctor's that she could recognize as not simply a cheap facsimile. A voice in the back of her mind whispered an echo of Donna Noble's parting words, "Don't you see what he's trying to give you?" Yes. She did. Just because he had given it, though, didn't mean she had agreed to accept.

Except she had. She'd kissed him. The Other. Not her Doctor. There were too many "new" appellations in front of this Doctor. This time. She was all too aware that the hand in hers was too warm. Not like her Doctor's. The hand was the Other's now, not his. She couldn't bear to keep holding it, couldn't bear to let go of the one thing she still had of her Doctor. His final gift. She was accepting it even as she wished with all of her heart that she could go back in time (oh, to go back!) to return it.

She recognized, dimly, the sound of her mother's voice behind her. Mum was talking to someone about a car. Then she paused for a minute and asked about Tony. Cell phone. Mum was on the phone with Dad about leaving here. Going home.

How could she bear to leave this spot? How could she even tear her eyes away from the indentation in the sand where the TARDIS had once stood? Where her Doctor had been? Had left. Again. How could she turn around only to see the Other without howling in pain that the Doctor both was and was not there.

"Rose?" said a tentative, gentle voice from beside her. The hand in hers squeezed, as if to wake her up. The Other. "Rose?"

She nodded and turned, averting her gaze so she didn't have to see his face. She could move her arms and legs, could tear herself away from this spot, but only so long as she didn't have to meet his gaze. Those eyes, they would be so kind, so hurt, so...his. No. Best not to look.

"I'm here. I'm all right," she croaked.

"Me too. I'm all right too," he softly agreed. They both knew what "all right" really meant-anything but.

His hand squeezed hers. Too warm. In a suit that was too blue. Still, she didn't remove her hand. She needed the support, for one, to keep her from falling to the sand and never getting up. And she worried, in some corner of her mind, that she needed it because he was him. The Doctor. If she let go now, how could she know that he wouldn't disappear again? Even the Other, and she knew, KNEW he wasn't her Doctor, she couldn't bear to lose. Not again.

She squeezed back. It wasn't much. It wasn't a promise, it wasn't even a wish. It was, however, a sign. Not a bad sign, either.

Hand in hand, they turned. Neither looked at the other. Slowly they started walking away from the sea, away from the beach, away from the last place either of them had ever expected to be at again. Slowly, to somewhere else. Some-when else. The future. Whatever it held.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: **Dr. Who and its associated characters don't belong to me, I'm just taking them out for a spin.

Part Two

He squeezed her hand. She didn't look at him, wouldn't look, but she did turn around at last and let him lead her away from the beach and the square impression in the sand that neither of them had been able to stop staring at only seconds earlier. Gone. His TARDIS was gone. His other self was gone. Only he remained. Him-and Rose. Unsure, with a gaping wound in his newly singular heart that felt as all-consuming as a black hole when he thought about what he had just lost, he tried to focus on her. If he could just concentrate on Rose then perhaps he could ignore everything else until just breathing didn't hurt anymore. She squeezed back. Not a promise, not even a wish. A possibility. For the future.

TWO WEEKS LATER

It was the mundane bits that finally made him do it. To be sure, the last couple of weeks had been extraordinarily busy by most human standards. Leaving Norway, arriving back in England, arriving at the Tyler residence-Pete, Tony, Jackie, and (temporarily, he hoped) himself and Rose under one roof, debriefing after debriefing with Torchwood and UNIT. Scraping together a new identity for himself so he could move freely about as he pleased. It was all very busy. It was all very boring. It was all very, very unhappy.

He and Rose had managed not to be alone for more than a few seconds at a time. There had been no more kissing. She was mourning her loss-her Doctor-and truthfully he needed some time too. The funny thing about the meta-crisis which had created him was that it wasn't like regenerating at all. Everything was still maddeningly the same. No new taste buds, no new fashion sense, no new face. Sure, he was missing a heart, but otherwise everything felt the same, except the one thing that had never changed. The TARDIS was gone. The companion before he'd ever thought of having a Companion was forever lost to him. In fanciful moments he wondered if this was how Sarah Jane and the others had felt when he'd left them for the final time.

Beyond his grief, though, the routine of daily human life began to grate on him in ways he'd never considered before. Sleeping regularly, eating regularly, needing to use the loo regularly. Day in and day out, always the same. Was it any surprise that he broke under the strain?

It was Jackie who found him, ten kilometers from the house, just walking along the street in the moonlight. "Are you daft? It's pitch black out here, and this road isn't lit properly. Do you WANT to get hit by a car, or something?" He allowed her to berate him, offering no apologies or excuses for his flight. As Jackie drove him back to the house, he wondered if Rose had been searching for him too. Wondered if she'd been worried about him when he hadn't come down for dinner. Wondered if she'd been secretly grateful that he was gone.

The next time, he made it all the way to London proper before a member of the Torchood team ran him to ground.

"You know you're free to leave the estate, of course," Pete began awkwardly when the Doctor was brought into his office. "It's just you keep disappearing, and..."

"And you need to know where I am," the Doctor swallowed drily.

"Just some advance warning, that's all I'm asking. Doctor-" Pete paused as if he were trying to find the right way to phrase what he wanted to say. "She worries. I mean, we worry, obviously, at Torchwood when we lose you. If you were taken-kidnapped-by someone or something, well, we'd obviously do everything to get you back. That's the official reason I'm giving you for keeping tabs on your whereabouts. But speaking as a friend and her father-Rose worries. She's having a rough go of things now, obviously, and wouldn't want me to say it, but losing you again would just kill her."

The Doctor nodded. He knew, of course. And it did matter to him. Rose mattered. He just wished he didn't feel so trapped in the monotony of this world he'd gone and stranded them both in.

"Now, if you're ready to talk about coming on as a member of the team..." Pete trailed off. They'd had this discussion already.

"You know why I can't," the Doctor looked at him, sternly now. "Torchwood's mission, its goals, the reason it exists is all tied up in the notion that every extraterrestrial thing and body that happens to wander into the planet's vicinity should be bent and forced to serve Earth's purposes. I don't agree."

"So come on board and help us change, Doctor," Pete leaned forward across his desk, meeting the Doctor's steely resolve with his own. "You think we're in the wrong? Fix us. Make us better." Another pause, a long one. "What else are you going to do with the rest of your life?"

And there it was. The million pound question. The other him hadn't thought about that bit, had he? Hadn't considered that it was all well and good to give him to Rose, to ask her to make him into a better man, but that at the end of the day the whole reason Rose had been able to make the Doctor better in the TARDIS was because there was a TARDIS. They could do things, go places, see the universe and learn from their experiences. How much room for personal growth could possibly exist in a lifetime of paying bills, going to the movies, and mowing the grass every week? Humans seemed to do all right most of the time, but he wasn't really human, was he?

"At least think about it, all right?" Pete leaned back in his chair, recognizing the palpable hit he had scored with his last question. He was a clever man, Pete Tyler, and he knew that the Doctor wasn't prepared to answer him today. Maybe in another week or two. Maybe once he and Rose finally started talking again.

"Would you like a lift back to the house? I could have someone drop you...or you could stay in town, of course. Do as you like. Just keep in touch, okay?" Pete handed him his phone. "You keep forgetting this-just keep it on you so we can reach you if we need something."

The Doctor took the mobile. Pete was a good man, even if he did work for Torchwood.

Turning down the street after he'd left the building, the Doctor tried to forget the conversation. Tried to immerse himself in the experience of seeing new things, new faces. He stopped at a chip stand, and tried not to think about how many times he'd stopped at nearly identical chip shops already that week. That even these wanderings through the streets of London were beginning to feel routine. He didn't do routine.

Exhausted with his own ennui, he made a decision. This life was insufferable. He couldn't do it anymore. There was only one solution to his problem, and it was back at the Tyler estate. If Rose couldn't give him a chance then there wasn't any point in trying to pretend that he could live as a human. She couldn't fix him, but if she wasn't going to be there then he didn't really see the point in anything else.


	3. Chapter 3

Part Three

The first time he disappeared she panicked. Not in a run-around-like-a-mad-person way, but in a quiet, all-the-oxygen-has-suddenly-been-sucked-out-of-the-room way. Dinner had been the one time of day he had stopped moving for even a few minutes, and the one time of day she had allowed herself to look at him. They still avoided eye contact, but she would be lying if she didn't acknowledge that she had actually started looking forward to those 20 minutes sitting across the table from him every night. When he didn't come down one night she worried. When Jackie came back from his room to say that he was gone her heart stopped beating. And when Pete had rung the mobile they'd given him the very first day he arrived only to hear it respond from a drawer in his desk, she stopped breathing.

Everyone had scattered immediately to look for him. Everyone except Rose. She had stayed frozen at the table, unable to move or think, just feeling the rising terror of losing him again. Again again. New again. It hadn't even occurred to her that he might have been taken. No, he had chosen to leave. He'd left her. Because she'd been so stupid. Because she hadn't looked at him. Hadn't spoken to him. Had gone out of her way to avoid him every hour of every day save for those increasingly precious 20 minutes at dinner.

An hour later, her mum had phoned. "I've got him," she'd said, trying to sound light-hearted, but actually coming out vaguely strangled. "He went out for a walk and forgot to tell us. Daft man. We'll be home in a sec!"

It took all of Rose's willpower not to run to the door and shake him senseless when he and Mum arrived home. If he had looked at her or acknowledged her presence she would have, too. The numb look on his face, the way he let Jackie boss him around, and above all else, the way he didn't even notice that she was standing there kept her away. She understood.

The next time she hadn't panicked. He'd left right after breakfast, and she'd watched him go from the kitchen window. Walking, not running. Walking anywhere because being here was like being in a cage. Every other time he'd gotten restless since the first day she met him he'd been able to go back to the TARDIS and find somewhere new to explore. Not anymore. He still wasn't her Doctor, she still considered him the Other, but for the first time since she'd realized that her Doctor was leaving again without her, she felt like she understood this new one.

Understanding wasn't acceptance, though.

She was messing about in Tony's room when he found her. She should have been at work, of course, especially at three o'clock on a Tuesday, but she had no intention of going back there for now. The look on her Doctor's face when she'd told him that she'd worked for Torchwood when she had been trying to find him had given her back the sense of distaste she'd felt for the group when she'd first arrived here. Pete understood-sort of. He'd given her a leave of absence and hadn't even bothered to say that she could come back when she was ready. They both knew that might not happen. So she spent her days with her little brother, or watching telly, or wandering around. The Doctor wasn't the only one who needed regular changes of scenery, after all.

"Rose?"

She'd been leaning over the end of Tony's bunk bed, trying to retrieve his torch from the space between the headboard and the wall. Startled, she jumped, hit her head hard on the top bed's supports and fell awkwardly on her rear, managing to bang her knee against the ladder in the process.

In a second he was kneeling next to her, his hand on her head, checking for a lump. "I'm so sorry...didn't think before I said something...thought you'd heard me come in..." He took her chin in his hand and gently but firmly pulled her head towards his own. His eyes-this was the first time she'd actually looked him in the eye-searched hers. For a moment she was just confused-what was he doing?-before it occurred to her that he was checking her pupils for signs of concussion.

Suddenly they both tensed. He was so close-too close. The frission between them began to build, and she could feel herself starting to succumb to it. To the memory of that kiss at Bad Wolf Bay. To the temptation she felt to kiss him again. But his hand on her cheek was too warm, and suddenly she remembered again that no matter who he looked like, he wasn't her Doctor.

"It's okay-I'm okay, I think," she said, averting her gaze and before her heart could break again. "Just a bump, that's all."

"Ah, yes," he said, releasing her and standing up again.

She rose, awkwardly, and for a moment they just stood there, unsure of what to say or do next.

"You came back," she started at the same moment he said, "Listen, Rose, we need to talk."

Another awkward pause. "Talk?" she asked. As if she didn't know what he meant. The Doctor never "talked" about anything real. Or if he did, he didn't lay it out there as a "talk." He wasn't her Doctor. Her Doctor wouldn't have said those words. Not like that.

"I'm back. Yes. Back. I don't know how long I'll stay, though. That's what I need to talk about, actually. You see..." he paused, and she could tell he had no idea how to say whatever it was. He ran his palms along the sides of his head, paced across the room, thrust his hands in his pockets, and turned around again to face her. "Can we talk somewhere else? I cannot think in a room covered in Chuggington paraphernalia."

She smiled then, a real smile. It felt like a long time since she'd smiled like that. "Lead the way."

They wound up in the kitchen, which naturally meant putting on a pot of tea. Tea meant biscuits, and all told it took another twenty minutes before they were settled enough to actually begin whatever this conversation was.

"You were saying," she prompted. Somewhere between his hand on her cheek and handing him the sugar pot for his tea, the wall between them seemed to have...well, not vanished. Shrunk? Become transparent? She wasn't sure exactly, but the awkwardness she'd felt around him every single day for the last two weeks had disappeared.

"Yes, well, about me coming back. I have. Come back, that is. Pete's associates found me earlier, brought me to Torchwood. I told him I'd start carrying the mobile around for real. So you don't worry. But..." he trailed off.

"But you're not staying," she finished. Of course he wasn't staying. The wall started growing again as she considered his departure. How many times could he possibly leave her? Regardless, she wasn't going back to that damn bay again.

"It's not that I don't want to stay, Rose," he said. "Don't think it's that I don't want to. I do. It's just, this life...it's-"

"Boring" she finished. "I know."

"Yes," he breathed, "boring. You know me-I don't know how to be domestic. Never needed to know. Never wanted to know. I don't think he considered that when he left me here. I wouldn't have thought of it myself until two weeks ago, you know. Mowing the lawn, paying bills, going to the movies." He made a face, as if he'd just smelled something gone bad.

The tears stung, and she found she wasn't surprised by them anymore. He was leaving her. Angrily, she swiped at her eyes, wishing that he would just go already and let her have a good cry in peace. It was bad enough that he was going, worse that she had to let him see her cry. She'd always tried so hard never to let him see her cry.

"Rose? What?" he reached his hand across the table to take hers, but she pulled it away before he could touch her. Damn that hand.

"No, no, no, no. Oh, it's coming out all wrong," he moved his hand back to his side of the table. "I need you to know these things, but this isn't what I really have to tell you. Listen," the tone of his voice changed, grew gentle. "You know I'm not happy. That this isn't a life I've ever wanted for myself what with the staying in one place and doing the same things day after day. But I think I could do it-I think I could even grow fond of parts of it-if..." he broke off again. "Rose, look at me."

She lifted her face, and met his gaze again. The tears were still wet on her face. "If what?"

"If...if I even thought...I mean, if I had some hope that..." he ran his fingers through his hair again, and stood up. He'd never liked sitting still. She loved that about him. He needed to move when he talked, when he thought about difficult things. The final sentence came out in a single breath, "If you would just maybe, possibly, someday feel about me the way I know you feel about him."

He looked at her then the way he had looked at her on the beach. Pleading, wanting her to accept him as the Doctor. Not as the Other. As himself. It was the saddest thing she had ever seen. She opened her mouth to respond, realized she had too many things to say to know where to start, and shut it again. He misunderstood, and his eyes started to grow colder, distant again. Not wanting him to pull away, she reached for him as he started to turn toward the door. It was the first time she'd touched him voluntarily since the day he was created.

"Don't," she said softly. "Don't go."

Her fingers caught his sleeve just as he turned back to face her again. His hand rose to touch her face, and suddenly her lips were against his. Her hands were on his shoulders, in his hair, and his were pulling her closer to him, as close as they could possibly be. His lips, her lips, wanting more, needing more.

He was the one who finally broke apart, breathing heavily. "We...we need to talk about things."

"Yeah, right," she agreed, feeling lightheaded and weak and completely unclear for the moment about what "things" could be so important to have ended that kiss.

A pause. He looked at her, she looked at him, and like magnets they were pulled back together again. Lips and hands, moving and exploring for the first time the things and places they had both scarcely dared to dream about for years. Without even thinking about it, she started pushing his suit jacket off his shoulders. He broke apart just long enough to ask, "Are you sure?" She didn't answer, just kissed him again. Truth be told, she wasn't sure. There was a tiny corner of her brain screaming that this was wrong-that he wasn't her Doctor-but she couldn't stop.

Thankfully, his guest room was on the ground floor. Otherwise Jackie would have met with an unexpected (though not perhaps unwelcome) surprise when she arrived home after picking Tony up at school forty-five minutes later


	4. Chapter 4

Part Four

Not willing to break their embrace for even a moment, they had stumbled through the kitchen, past the foyer, and down the hall to his room shedding clothes and bumping into furniture all the way. He'd felt her mouth stretch into a grin when he'd knocked over that spindly little end table she'd told Jackie the other day was in everybody's way, and they both laughed when she'd blindly thrown his suit jacket across the room, taking out a potted plant in the process. His single heart pounded as they reached the door to his room, and he fumbled with the door handle for just a moment before they were inside.

Her fingers hadn't been able to do more than worry the buttons of his shirt until they'd stopped walking, and as she worked at them he could only think of how good it felt to finally let himself go. He'd never allowed himself to dream of this moment before. Back when he was still a Time Lord and she was the human who would grow old and die, he'd kept his feelings for her locked down at the bottom of his hearts. Acknowledging them then was impossible. He'd made that decision centuries ago. Now, though, as he shrugged off his shirt and took his lips from hers only long enough to pull her sweater over the top of her head, he took a moment in the back of his mind (the only part not preoccupied with just experiencing what was happening) to thank his counterpart for this, and to feel pity that the other him would never know what it felt like to succumb to Rose.

He held her at arm's length for a moment, and asked again, "Are you sure?" He knew things between them weren't fixed, that this wouldn't magically repair the hurt and loss they both felt, but he needed to hear her say the words. Needed to know that she wasn't going to regret this.

"I'm sure."

And she was back in his arms again, and all traces of coherent thought evaporated from his mind.

They hadn't spoken a word afterwards, just laid there in possibly-fraught silence, thinking. Him bolstered on a pillow, her head on his chest. Just breathing, thinking. From his perspective, the silence was easy, comfortable, but he couldn't tell if it felt the same to her without seeing her face. Had they just made a monumental mistake, or was this the first step toward healing the rift between them? He hoped for the latter, but worried that she didn't see it the same way. After all, the problems they had pointedly not talked about an hour ago were still there. They would need to deal with them sooner or later, and what they had just done...well, it necessitated sooner from where he was sitting.

Then the slam of the car door just outside, and Tony's high-pitched preschooler's voice explaining something to his mother as their feet crunched against the gravel drive.

In an instant the pair sprang out of bed and started frantically looking for clothes.

"Where-oh, my knickers are behind the desk," Rose dove for them as he tossed her sweater in her direction. "Thanks-here's your-" and his shorts sailed over his head. There was no time, though, and they both knew it. Jackie would have already seen Rose's car, and Pete had presumably phoned to let her know that the Doctor had been found. She'd know that her daughter was home, and would at least suspect that he was as well.

"ROSE!" bellowed Tony as he and Jackie came through the front door. "Ro-OSE! I made you a picture!"

"Shit, shit, shit," the Doctor could hear her muttering under her breath as she tried to button her jeans.

"Hey-" he turned and touched her arm. "Relax. It's not like we've done something wrong, and-"

"You really want my Mum to find us like this?" she asked. Well, when she put it that way, no, he didn't. There were many things he thought he might be able to eventually get used to in this world, but never Jackie Tyler.

He had to give Jackie credit, she'd handled their too-tardy arrival (he had gone first, under strict orders to distract Jackie long enough so she wouldn't realize that Rose had also emerged from his room) with aplomb. Of course she knew. For one thing, they'd made an absolute mess of the house, and for another they both looked so, so guilty. And then there was the hair. Hers was a disaster—he didn't even want to consider his own.

Jackie had blinked once. Hard. Then she'd turned and asked Tony if he wanted to go play in the yard. Rose had mumbled something about needing to get a thing from her room before fleeing upstairs. Jackie had turned to him then, looked him up and down in the same appraising way she'd done when Rose had first explained who he was all those years ago. Her lips were pursed disapprovingly, but he could have sworn he saw a smile struggling to break through. Her eyes were definitely smiling. He nodded briskly at her, and as she turned to usher Tony outside he grabbed the bannister and took the stairs two at a time.

"Rose!"


	5. Chapter 5

Part Five

Rose Tyler, onetime defender of the universe, was hiding in her closet.

Oh, she wasn't cowering in the corner or anything, but the moment she'd seen the look on her mother's face she'd decided that it was better to simply not deal with what she and he had just done than try process what had happened. Denial, powering tourists through Egypt since time began.

She heard the back door slam shut, and a pounding on the stairs that could only have come from his feet. Idly she thought that he must be running to find her. It was good to hear him running again.

"Rose?" he yelled from down the hall. "Rose? Where are you?"

She didn't answer. She needed to think. In her closet.

"Rose?" he was in her room now, probably peering around the doorjamb. He'd never been in her room here before. Not that it was much to see. She'd never bothered to decorate much, so it still looked more like a frilly Jackie creation than anywhere she'd spend much time. She wondered if he'd gone into her room in the TARDIS after leaving her at Bad Wolf Bay the first time. That room had felt like hers.

"Rose, I know you're in here. We need to talk. Your mum is outside with Tony, but she's not going to stay there forever and I'd like to at least have a few minutes to ourselves before she comes back in and wants to know everything. Rose?" He finally thought to peer behind the double doors next to her bathroom. "Rose, why are you in the closet?"

She emerged at last, and felt like an idiot. She'd been naked in bed with the man minutes ago, and now he'd caught her hiding from him behind her winter coat.

"I—I needed something," she tried to carry off the excuse with dignity, but knew how ridiculous it sounded. Moving on, then, "What did Mum say?"

"Nothing, exactly," he looked a bit uncomfortable for a moment before settling his expression into features she'd always mentally termed "unpleasantness ahoy."

"We need to talk," she said before he could say it first.

"Yes, talk," he agreed, relaxing a bit. "Do you want to sit down?" He gestured behind him, then stopped as he realized that the only place to sit was the bed. "Ah…"

"Standing's fine for now," she said, recognizing that he was no more ready to address what they'd just done than she was. "You were saying…before…that you were unhappy." Yes, start the conversation on the unpleasantness he'd brought to the table. The less she had to talk about her own conflicted feelings right now the better.

He sighed. "What I believe I said was that I'm unhappy _now_, but that I think I could get used to this place—this life—if I knew there was a chance I'd be able to share it with you." The look of sincere yearning was back in his eyes, and her insides melted at the sight of that expression. Next to his look of sheer glee, it was the most wonderful thing she had ever seen.

She realized he was waiting for her to respond. "I… I'm glad you think you could be happy here. Really, I am. If we're being honest, this place has been hard for me to get used to too. I mean, it took me a long time to get used to it the first time, and then I stumbled across the dimensional cannon and realized I could get back to you, and…" she trailed off. She'd just called him "you." Meaning "the Doctor" not "the Other." She realized with a start that she wasn't thinking of him as anything but "the Doctor" anymore.

"And?" he asked. She wondered if he'd caught her slip. Of course he had. His body may have been human, but his brain was still (at least mostly) Time Lord. He knew.

"And I suppose I stopped being used to it. I started wanting to go back out there again. Traveling. With…" she trailed off again, unsure of how to finish the sentence.

"With him." His tone was hard. Hurt.

"It's not like that," she reached out to him, took his hand. "I mean, you were him then, right? One Doctor. It's now that's confusing."

He was looking at their joined hands. His eyes were soft again.

"It is confusing, isn't it?" his voice was small. Then he looked up at her again and smiled. "Pronouns. Very confusing"

She smiled too. This was good. Smiling with him, joking. It wasn't like old times, but it felt…kind of similar.

"So let's start with the things we have in common," he started pacing around the room, rubbing his hands together. She could hear the old mania creeping back into his voice.

"Things in common?" she asked, not quite following.

"Yes. Things in common. Like, for example, we're both confused by pronouns at the moment. And we both aren't terribly thrilled at the idea of living a life of mowing the lawn, paying bills, and going to the movies." He smiled. "Never really cared for movies myself, actually. Too much sitting and watching other people have adventures, not enough audience participation."

"Okay," she was willing to go along with this even though she wasn't quite sure where it was heading. At least it was easier than talking about the things they didn't share. "And we both like chips."

"Yes, _chips_!" He was almost shouting. "Now you've got it. We both like fish and chips, and we both like to run, and we both like-" he stopped. Then deliberately, purposefully, he crossed the span between them, took her face in his hands, and kissed her.

The world stopped. The confusion…well, it didn't stop, but it certainly slowed down considerably.

"We both like that," she breathed as they came up for air a minute later.

"Agreed. That's on the 'like' list."

"Why are we making a 'like' list again?"

He pulled away from her and resumed his pacing. "I said that I wasn't sure if I could get used to this place. To being domestic. That I thought I might be able to do it with you. 'With' in this sense connotes some kind of relationship. People in relationships need to have things in common, so-"

"So you're making a list."

"Correction, _we're_ making a list." He grinned then. Really grinned.

And that was the moment when her heart melted. Or possibly broke. More likely than not, it did both. Because he was so, so perfectly the Doctor, and at the same time so completely not. Not really.

"Hey, what's this?" his hand brushed her cheek, and she realized she was crying again.

"I…you…" she heaved a sigh that came out a sob. "You're right and not right, and I'm just so tired of being confused."

He took her in his arms then the way he'd done a thousand times before, and just hugged her. Neither of them spoke for a long time. Then they heard the door slam again, and Tony's voice called out for Rose again.

Reluctantly, she pulled out of his embrace. "Time to face the music."

"Time to face your mother, you mean."

"Mum? She'll be fine. If I were you, I'd worry more about Dad."


	6. Chapter 6

Part Six

Dinner that evening was sufficiently awkward to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that Pete and Jackie both had a pretty good idea of just what had happened that afternoon. It hadn't helped when Jackie had produced the Doctor's dirt-spattered jacket after the salad was served, pointedly announcing, "Oh, and I think one of you might have lost this behind the plant there earlier."

He hadn't been human long, and was still getting used to this body's physiological responses to various stimuli, but the Doctor was fairly certain he blushed as he accepted his clothing over the bread bowl.

"Why was your coat behind the plant, Doctor?" asked Tony, at which point Rose had choked on her water and Pete had to get up to hit her a few times between the shoulders before she was able to breathe again. Seeing as how things were bound to go downhill from that point, the Doctor had decided a hasty retreat was in order and begged off from the remainder of the meal citing a newly-formed headache.

Once again in his room, the Doctor took a moment to close his eyes and appreciate the silence. This world was too quiet on the whole-he'd never before realized just how much he relied on the TARDIS's steady thrum to keep him company during the lonely times-but for the moment quiet was all he wanted.

He opened his eyes and realized that his bed was still mussed from that afternoon. He allowed himself to enjoy a brief memory of Rose before locking it down again. Dwelling on those happy minutes wasn't his purpose at the moment-he needed to think.

The thing he kept coming back to, the thing that had weighed on his mind even while he was trying to make Rose laugh earlier with his little list, was that he didn't know what to do next. Aside from her and the generally positive direction things seemed to be going, his primary problem remained: his TARDIS was gone. Today's distractions had perhaps even been the exception that proves the rule: he needed variety, change, and adventure to survive. Even with Rose at his side he really wasn't sure he would ever be satisfied, much less happy, if he had to live an average human's life. If Rose hadn't been willing (or if she still wasn't willing in the long term-a mutual fondness for chips was hardly the basis of a committed relationship, particularly when compared to the life they had once shared on the TARDIS) to try to mend things between them, then there really would have been no point in continuing to pretend that the life was worth living. He'd contemplated ending his own life before, after the Time War. With her...he knew he'd at least be willing to give it a try. The end result would be the same, though-he'd be miserable, and he'd eventually make her miserable as well.

What to do? What to do? He thrust his fingers through his hair and paced the room. Pete's offer ran through his mind again. Torchwood seemed like an obvious solution to his problem-and goodness knew there were adventures to be had there-but it was Torchwood. Rose had said they'd changed, and Pete had encouraged him to accept a position there in order to effect even greater change, but...

"Thanks for abandoning me down there with that lot," said Rose, slipping through the door. "Brought you a roll, by the way. It was all I could smuggle out without Mum and Dad taking notice." She tossed the bread his direction and he tore into it hungrily, wishing again that this new body didn't need to eat so frequently.

He resumed his pacing and thinking about all of the complications that could arise from working for Torchwood before really registering that she was there, acting as if coming to his room and sitting down on his still-untidy bed was a commonplace occurrence. There was apparently a lot more human in his brain than he'd realized before.

"Wait, what?" he started.

"We might be able to sneak down after they go to bed to get you something else," she continued, "That is, assuming that you're hungry and don't want to talk to them. I figured you'd want to avoid it since you practically ran out of the room at dinner." She smiled. "I think Dad feels kind of bad about it, but Mum is having a blast. She hasn't been able to tease anyone in this house like that in ages."

"Rose, tell me about Torchwood."

"Torchwood?" that caught her off-guard.

"I'm...curious. Pete offered me a job again today, and..." he trailed off, uncertain how to articulate his thought process to her. Probably best to skip the part about considering suicide.

The grin dropped from Rose's face. "What do you want to know? Mind, I only worked for them for a few months before the dimension cannon came up and I took off looking for you, so I don't really know everything they're up to at the moment."

They both pretended not to notice that she'd said "you" instead of "the Doctor."

"What're they like? Rather, how are they not like the Torchwood back on your world? Jack claimed once that things had changed, that Torchwood there was different after Canary Wharf, but this world hasn't had a Canary Wharf, so for all I know they're even worse than the Torchwood I knew." He sat down on the bed next to her and tried to keep an open mind.

This was relatively safe territory-no talking about feelings or the future-not in direct terms anyway, and for the next two hours he listened while she told him everything she knew. Torchwood here was different from back home. For one thing, they operated more in the open than the other Torchwood did. Publicity kept them reasonably honest, she explained, as did the fact that there had been considerable backlash against secret adaptations of alien technology into everyday life since the Cybermen invasion several years earlier. As she related her experiences with their teams and leadership, the Doctor just listened.

When she finally ran out of things to say, he stood and started pacing again. He'd been more surprised than anything at some of what she had said. Torchwood here was definitely different than the one on her Earth. It wasn't perfect-he'd heard more than a few things he hadn't liked-but if Pete had meant what he'd said about making changes...well, he wasn't going to dismiss the idea out of hand.

"Will you work for them again? Torchwood, I mean?" This was the litmus test. Rose's ethics, he knew from experience, were remarkably similar to his own. No wonder, given how many of them had likely been shaped by her time in the TARDIS. If she wasn't comfortable with Torchwood as it was, he knew he wouldn't be either.

"Yeah, I think I will. It's either that or a shop, and Torchwood pays a lot better." She smiled, but seeing that he wasn't terribly reassured, continued. "I'm joking! No, Torchwood's a good fit for me. It would have been hard to go back to a regular life, a regular job, after I'd been away. At Torchwood I don't have to pretend I'm somebody who's never seen other worlds, who's never risked her life to save the Earth, who's never met the Doctor. That's important to me." She looked at him intently, "Are you going to accept Dad's offer?"

He shook his head slowly. "I don't know, Rose. I really don't. I'm not totally against the idea, but..."

"But it'll take some getting used to," she finished. "I know."

She stood and stretched. It was dark outside now, and from the sound of things everyone else in the house had already gone to bed. He watched her as she loosened up her joints, rolling her neck to work out a knot. Wordlessly, he crossed the room to rub her shoulders. It was the sort of thing he'd done before-back when he was the only Doctor-but it somehow felt completely new. She sighed contentedly as his fingers worked out the tension in her back, and they enjoyed the silence together.

When she turned around and brought her lips up to his, he greeted them eagerly. Slowly, gently, they touched and explored. It still felt strange, still new and different from anything before, but after the heat of the afternoon they both wordlessly agreed that this time they'd take their time. There were still unanswered questions, still doubts in her mind and his, but the biggest hurdles seemed to be behind them. For the moment, they could merely enjoy one another.


	7. Chapter 7

Part Seven

Rose Tyler couldn't deny it any more. She'd tried, and even after the events of the last 24 hours part her of was still trying to ignore the truth. It was staring her right in the face, though, and pretending that it wasn't had started feeling more than ridiculous. It had started to feel wrong. The man she was sleeping next to—sleeping with, to be precise—was the Doctor. Her Doctor. There was nothing Other about him at all. Even the heat of his body against hers no longer felt unnatural. It was just a body, after all. One heart, two hearts, what did it matter? He was the Doctor and she loved him just as she always had. Only now, he could love her back.

She felt a grin spread across her face as the revelation sunk in. "You're my Doctor," she whispered. "I love you." She'd never said those words to him before, and she waited a moment for him to respond.

The Doctor, for his part, seemed remarkably unimpressed by her declaration. Of course, he was also dead asleep, so she couldn't blame him too much for not showing more enthusiasm.

Not wanting to wake him, Rose carefully twisted herself out of his embrace so she could take a good look at him. Her head had been resting on his chest, just as it had been when Jackie had interrupted them earlier that afternoon. They had fallen asleep in one another's arms after falling into bed for the second time that day. For the second time ever.

She wasn't sure what had woken her—from the look of the sky through the curtains it was somewhere between two and four in the morning—but she wasn't eager to fall back to sleep. No, she just wanted to watch him and enjoy feeling like her heart was whole again for the first time…the first time since she'd had to say goodbye to his hologram at Bad Wolf Bay. Two years. She'd been walking around with a Doctor-shaped hole in her heart for two years. How had she even survived?

Leaning back on one arm to look at him, she couldn't quite believe her eyes. There was the Doctor, asleep, in her (well, his, but it was her house) bed. He looked impossibly peaceful and, young? She made a mental note to ask Pete about having Torchwood's physician run some tests to find out how old his new body actually was. His mind and memories might be over 900 years old, but this regeneration had always struck her as somewhere around 35.

She'd never seen the Doctor asleep before. His breathing was steady and deep, and he was faintly snoring. The Doctor snored! She stifled a giggle. They'd need to do something about that—she'd never get a good night's sleep again if he snored because she never again intended to sleep anywhere but by his side. Here and now, she was making her choice, and it was him.

Still smiling, unable to stop, Rose snuggled back against his chest. So much had happened in just one day. What would tomorrow hold? Whatever it was, she had no doubt that they would face it together


	8. Chapter 8

Part Eight—Epilogue

As the dawn broke over the horizon, Jackie Tyler tiptoed down the hall to the Doctor's room. She had no qualms about taking a peek—just a small one—into his room. Nothing she hadn't seen before, and besides, a check of her daughter's bed a minute ago had revealed that Rose had slept elsewhere last night. Holding her breath, Jackie slowly turned the handle and pushed open the door.

And there they were. Fast asleep in one another's arms. Rose's lips were parted in a soft smile, and the Doctor's face was turned toward hers, almost as if he couldn't bear to turn away from her even in sleep.

"About time," Jackie whispered, and then closed the door again. Later, she was sure, Rose would tell her everything, but for now she was content in the knowledge that her daughter and the Doctor were happy and together at last.


End file.
